11 October 2015

The Importance of Cleaning your Makeup Brushes + How I clean mine

It's a truth universally acknowledged that most of my friends (and yours too I'm sure) will straight up ignore - YOU need to clean your makeup brushes. And regularly.
Why?
Because first of all - ew, why would you want something dirty on your face?
Second of all - basic hygiene yo
Your beloved makeup brush is harbouring a whole lot of stuff:

all the excess makeup that didn't make it to your face

sebum it's rubbed off of your face when you were applying it

oils from your pores

dust from wherever you've kept your brush

All of these things have been sitting in your brush and breeding all sorts of bacteria
By then rubbing all of this onto your face you aren't doing your skin any favours - welcome to completely avoidable breakouts and blackheads

If the threat of breakouts and even weird infections in some cases (really really dirty brushes that haven't been cleaned in a long time can carry all sorts of germs that can result in eye infections etc) isn't enough to make you run to your brushes and beg for forgiveness then it's a tried and true fact - cleaner brushes apply product 1000000000000000000 x smoother and just generally better than dirty brushes.

Now after all of this rambling and trying to make you want to clean your brushes I'll tell you how to clean them.

I personally switch between two products:
The Beauty Blender solid cleanser and M.A.C cosmetics brush cleanser

The Beauty Blender cleanser is more of a deep conditioning clean that will remove stains from your brushes (or beauty sponges) as well as the product itself and all those nasties it's been keeping in there.

The M.A.C brush cleanser is more alcohol (for disinfecting) so it will get rid of the actual product and any bacteria but I wouldn't recommend for a really deep clean because I find it doesn't really remove actual stains very well. Just because stains are left behind doesn't mean the aforementioned product is still there - you'll get clean colour pay off on whatever you use.

Another important thing to mention when actually cleaning your brushes is to never, I repeat, NEVER let your brushes stand upright before they are dry. Whenever I clean my brushes I grab some blue tack and stick them to the edge of something (edge of bathroom sink, edge of shelving) and let them hang out there upside down until they have dried out. This is so important because you don't want water getting into the ferrule of your brush because it will wear down the glue that holds the hairs up there and your brush will shed.

So that's why you need to clean your makeup brushes and how I clean mine.

Side note: I personally clean my brushes every time I use them (I hate putting dirty brushes on my face) but it's normal to wash them once a week.

Let me know in the comments how you clean your brushes and feel free to share this with your friends that need to clean theirs.